Taking Questions

Following is the third and final set of responses from Ed McCabe, who worked for a number of major advertising agencies and is a founder of Scali, McCabe, Sloves.

We are no longer accepting questions for this feature.

Do you think, if transported, would a ’60s ad man be able to compete in this current environment?

— Posted by Donald

And win! If he could get his foot in the front door.

Since I am interested in ethics, I want to know what if any amount of ethical discussion was present in the American advertising process in your experience. In all your firsthand presence in the American advertising process, can you address how ethical issues were treated? Are ethical issues of a product or the way it is sold acknowledged and addressed or avoided and ignored? Any experiences on this?

“A supernumerary,” she adds, referring to her role as an extra at the Metropolitan Opera.

Instead of singing in the chorus, she was paid a terrible wage to dress as a wench, a courtesan, or whatever character was required to help fill the stage. The payoff was not monetary; instead, many aspiring starlets got to brush up against fame backstage. And in 1964 — when the opening episode takes place, and when the house was on Broadway between 39th and 40th Streets — the backstage area was quite tight, according to Richard Holmes, who has been working at the Met for 45 years. Read more…

Taking Questions

Following is the second set of responses from Ed McCabe, who worked for a number of major advertising agencies and is a founder of Scali, McCabe, Sloves.

We are no longer accepting questions for this feature.

Do you think companies and agencies have gone too far in selling concepts rather than products? Do you think there is too much forced humor in ads today, making the ad, and not the product, the focus?

— Posted by Hugh, a former employee of Rapp, Collins, Stone & Adler.

Yes, I think there is a tendency to force “humor” into advertising these days. It’s easier to come up with an idea for a supposedly humorous commercial than it is to come up with a serious grand strategic vision for a product or service that will make the client’s company a fortune. I believe agencies have become less adept at that than they once were. I think there are two reasons for this. First, the big personalities who owned the agencies have mostly all been bought out. So few agencies possess a single-minded vision for the product they produce. Secondly, I think people today may work harder (that is, they try to do more) but they’re ultimately lazier. Quality takes longer than quantity.

Taking Questions

Following is the first set of responses from Ed McCabe, who worked for a number of major advertising agencies and is a founder of Scali, McCabe, Sloves.

We are no longer accepting questions for this feature.

With the advent of the Internet and the appearance that it is changing everything one way or another, how would you suggest to someone who might want to get into the advertising field, how they would go about it? Do they old school it? Do they try to crash an agency with ideas on products that agency may be representing? What would you do if you were just starting out today?

It’s Restaurant Week in New York City, but a quick look at the Zagat’s guide showed that you won’t be booking a table for two at Jimmy’s La Grange: There is no such restaurant, putting us on the hunt for a bit of black-and-white New York.

The February 1965 White Pages directory: there it is. Jimmy’s La Grange, at 151 East 49th Street, phone number PL 3-3899.

The address is now home to Ise Japanese Restaurant, and no one inside the small and narrow restaurant had ever heard of Jimmy’s. Down the block, Ramon San Marco, owner of San Marco’s, remembered the place from when he opened his restaurant in the late 1970s. “It was very popular,” he said. “It was a different New York. There weren’t so many restaurants.” Read more…

Mad Men City

“Who says you need a wholesale house to get a terrific price? Today one retail store gives you, not just low prices, but the amazing prices you only expect at wholesale. Here you can shop when you like, take as long as you like, buy or not as you like. And any time you arrive you’ll find fresh, elegant fashions in a full range of size and color. At this remarkable store you get the advantage of wholesale. You get the convenience of retail. And you don’t have to know someone who knows someone. All you have to know is Ohrbach’s.”

In March of that year, thousands of shoppers flocked to the department store to get the latest fashions from Paris, according to an article in The New York Times written by Marylin Bender (pdf). Preferred clients were granted access to merchandise beginning at 8:30 a.m., and the first sale was rung up at 9:15. An unidentified Midwesterner walked out with “the Paris look” for the bargain price of $2,164.

ALERT: While this week of “Mad Men” posts endeavors to remain spoiler-free, this one is informed by a close advance viewing of the episode to be broadcast Sunday. It describes New York City locations mentioned in the episode and, in doing so, gives away only the most benign plot points, like the location of the main characters’ new office. Nonetheless, if you want to go into Sunday’s episode knowing absolutely nothing in advance, save this post until next week.

Meyer Liebowitz/The New York TimesThe Time & Life Building, as seen in a photograph published in The New York Times, January 1960. (Click Image to Enlarge)

In the months following their inauspicious debut in a suite at the Pierre Hotel at the end of Season 3, the principals of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, who got the name “Mad Men” from their former Madison Avenue headquarters, have decamped to offices in the Time & Life Building at 1271 Avenue of the Americas — Sixth Avenue — between West 50th and 51st Streets. It is the perfect location for an upstart firm nurturing an image of being cutting edge.

The Time & Life Building was opened in 1959, just five years before the time depicted in Season 4. It topped out at 587 feet and was adorned, on Nov. 24, 1958, with a 35-foot Christmas tree on top. A 9-year-old Freeport, N.Y., boy named David Drivvers, the son of the project’s foreman, hollered, “O.K., Dad, take her away!” as he threw the switch to light the tree, according to The New York Times. Read more…

Viewers who are versed in “Mad Men” know that Don Draper keeps a stack of neatly pressed shirts in his drawer at work in the event of a late-night bender or liaison. In January 1964, the manufacturer of Arrow shirts started a campaign promising that a crisp white button-down would act as a magnet for a repulsed wife. Read more…

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